GEORGE HAD LEFT ME WITH AN IMPROVISED CONTRACT SCRIBBLED ON the rear flap of the romance novel I'd been reading, and almost immediately I'd taken down my awning and driven into town to call Ophelia. Me, on a movie set with Alex Rivers. Personally, I wasn't expecting much from a celebrity-living in L.A. had shown me how shallow and egocentric their worlds were-but I knew Ophelia would consider this a tremendous stroke of good fortune. She devoured the trade journals, always knowing what producer had hooked up with what director and what star; she stared like a groupie when we walked past movies that were being shot on the streets of L.A. I could imagine what her reaction would be-she'd die, or at least she'd say she was going to, because that was her answer for most things, from winning a part as an extra on a TV commercial to running out of lettuce when making a salad.

Ophelia Fox had been my roommate since we'd been thrown together by a computer our freshman year at UCLA. Back then, she'd had the unfortunate name of Olivera Frug, and she'd still been a B-cup and a blonde. I sort of anch.o.r.ed Ophelia to the real world, and in return, well, I suppose she made me laugh.

I also knew more about Ophelia than anyone else did. When I stayed at UCLA during my first Christmas break because there was nothing for me in Maine, I was surprised to see Ophelia was staying too. In her usual flip manner, she told everyone it was a way to work on her tan.

But on Christmas Eve we got drunk on a bottle of Glenfiddich, and when Ophelia thought I had fallen asleep she began to talk. She spoke of the stepfather who had been feeling her up since she was twelve. She spoke of the smell of his aftershave. She spoke of the insomnia she cultivated so that she would be able to hear the slightest breach of her bedroom door. When the sun came up we did not unwrap presents, but instead shyly treasured this gift of each other.

We were unlikely friends, but we were inseparable. When Ophelia began to remake herself in a different image, I stood by her. After all, I understood what she was trying so hard to disguise. She bought herself breast implants as a graduation gift and legally changed her name; and while I started work on my master's, she threw herself into the task of finding us an apartment close enough to the studios for her and to UCLA for me. It was a small place, but the rent was low, and we'd been there now for almost seven years.

"Go ahead," the operator said.

"Ophelia?"

I heard her let her breath out in a rush. "Thank G.o.d you called,"

she said, as if I were a half-mile away. "I'm having a crisis."

I grinned. "You're always having a crisis," I pointed out. "What's the problem today?"

"I'm supposed to meet my therapist at four o'clock, you know?"

Ophelia had been seeing someone to enhance her self-a.s.sertiveness ever since she had decided the sessions with the psychic weren't working.

"Right now I'm seeing him twice a week, and I'd really like to cut back to once, but I don't know how to tell him that."

I didn't want to laugh, I didn't mean to, but the sound leaked out.

I covered it with a cough.

"Maybe I just won't go," she sighed. "I'll tell him Thursday." She was quiet for a moment, and then seemed to remember where I was.

"And how's Africa?" she dutifully asked.

Ophelia did not understand my attraction to anthropology-to her it was a glorified way of getting filthy-but she knew how much it meant to me. "It's much more interesting than I expected," I said. "I'm moonlighting."

"As a safari guide?"

"As a technical advisor on Alex Rivers's new movie."

I heard a crash in the background. "OhmiG.o.d, ohmiG.o.d, ohmiG.o.d,"

Ophelia said. "How did this happen?"

Relating the entire story to Ophelia brought back my original doubts. "I know I'm going to regret this," I said. "If it wasn't for the money-and for a chance to screw UCLA-I wouldn't be doing it." I grimaced. "I bet he won't even want to get his hands dirty." I let my breath out slowly, mulling over the consequences of a hasty decision. I didn't like Custer, but I could avoid him when I was at the university.

I wasn't going to like Alex Rivers, but I had committed myself to being his shadow for ten hours a day.

"I'm sending you clothes," Ophelia announced. "My black sleeveless dress and the pink satin bra and-"

"Ophelia," I interrupted, "I'm his technical advisor, not his mistress."

"Still," Ophelia countered, "you never know. Just sign for the d.a.m.n package and you can stuff it into your bag and forget about it." She took a shaky breath. "I can't believe this. I just can't believe this. I knew I should have majored in anthropology." Her voice tumbled over her words, racing with excitement. "G.o.d, Ca.s.s," she said. "Alex Rivers!"

I smiled. If I even wore that bra within twenty yards of Alex Rivers, Ophelia would probably frame it when I got home. "He's just a person,"

I reminded her.

"Yeah," Ophelia said. "A person who makes four million per film and has the entire female population casting him in their fantasies at night."

I thought about this: Alex Rivers had not been in any of my fantasies, but then again most of my dreams had to do with chipping away at piles of dirt and finding men who'd lived millions of years ago. I tried to remember which of his films I had seen. I must have gone to them with Ophelia, because she was really the only person I spent my free time with, and she usually forced me to see the latest box office hit.

Vaguely I remembered Desperado, some Western made when we were in college, and Light and Shadows, which had been one of the token Vietnam coming-of-age pictures of 1987. There were a few action films whose t.i.tles I couldn't remember, and then the last one I'd seen, about six months ago, that love story. Applewild. I'd forgotten about that one.

It had surprised me, because I'd never seen Alex Rivers cast as a romantic hero, and he had made me believe in him. The film's message had stayed with me the whole drive home: Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I wondered if it was really true. Love, to my knowledge, was nothing more than a planned seduction. In college, I had lost my virginity to a fraternity boy, just because I wanted to know what it was like. There hadn't been any great ache around my heart, or a connection of the spirits. There was the speeding of my blood, the mix of our hot breath, and the simplicity of s.e.x.

There had not been many others, but I didn't think I was missing much. Most of the time I was too busy to notice. I would have liked kids, one day, but I would only create a child with someone I really cared about, and to this date the only person I had ever even imagined falling in love with was Connor.

"I have to go," I said. "This is costing a fortune."

"Call me Thursday after you meet him."

"Ophelia-"

"Thursday."

I closed my eyes. "We'll see," I said. "No promises."

I HAD NEVER SEEN SO MANY PEOPLE WHO WERE PAID TO DO NOTHING.

People sat on the ground, on folding canvas chairs, on boulders. There were cranes set up with tremendous cameras, and wires leading everywhere. A man wearing headphones sat in front of a portable sound system colored with k.n.o.bs and levers. Everyone was talking, George and Edward were nowhere to be found, and no one seemed to be in charge.

I was used to being sent to desolate locations without knowing a soul, but here I was out of my element. It seemed everywhere I placed my foot I got it tangled in some cord, and I had run right into a man carrying a profusion of wigs and tweed caps, knocking him to the ground. "Oh my G.o.d," I said, "let me help you." But he had just given me a dirty look, gathered his things, and rushed away.

I walked up to a woman who sat on a high canvas chair labeled SCRIPT. "Excuse me," I said. "I'm looking for the director."

She sighed, but she didn't look up from the open loose-leaf binder she held in her lap. "You and me both, babe," she said. She scribbled a note with a red pencil, and then yelled out someone's name, waving him over with her hand.

I bobbed and weaved past people with walkie-talkies looped into their belts. Lying across a table was a pile of scripts. " 'In His Image,' "

I read aloud, running my fingers over the Warner Brothers insignia at the bottom.

"Can I help you?" A harried-looking man stood in front of me, tapping his foot. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the script out of my hand.

"I'm looking for Bernie Roth," I said. "The director."

The man sneered at me. "Like I don't know who he is?" He snapped his fingers as two brawny men walked by carrying a heavy black rope.

"Hey-hey, where are you going with that? I told you it was supposed to go behind the tent."

"Wait," I said as he scurried after the rope, "Bernie Roth?"

"In a minute," he stalled. He yelled after the two men carrying the rope. "Behind the tent!"

I slung my knapsack onto the table and pulled a khaki baseball cap onto my head. If Mohammed can't get to the mountain, I figured, I'd just wait for the mountain to come to Mohammed. Sooner or later, someone was going to try to locate me. I sat down with my back against a tall tree, and hugged my knees to my chest.

I tried to think about Alex Rivers. I knew what he looked like, of course-he was on the cover of a magazine every month, or so it seemed.

He was, in a word, stunning. His brown hair was shot with gold; his jaw was square and marked by the cleft of his chin. He had a full, generous mouth that always looked as if he was holding back a secret.

And his eyes, his claim to fame, were remarkable. They were the splitsilver of an empty mirror, and like a mirror, when you looked into them even in a publicity photo, you could swear you were seeing your soul.

I supposed it wouldn't be a hardship to face him every day.

I was surprised at the quiet. No cameras were rolling, no one was waving frantically and calling "Action," no one was even saying anything that resembled a line. A fine red dust covered all the photographic equipment, as if it hadn't been used recently at all. No wonder it took twelve weeks to make a two-hour film.

The set, from what I could see, was in three parts. The first section was the actual excavation site of Olduvai Gorge, looking not much different from the UCLA site a half-mile away. The second area was a series of tents, and in front of one of them was an actress I had seen before but couldn't name. She was wearing khaki shorts and a Kalahari bush jacket, and I decided that my first piece of technical advice would be to tell the costume designer that the National Geographic look was nowhere near as realistic as a comfortable old T-shirt.

The third set was on a raised platform, designed to look like the inside of a tent. There was a cot and a collection of artfully arranged empty cartons, a low trestle table. On a shelf was a patterned china bowl and pitcher, and I couldn't help laughing out loud. China?

After a few minutes a girl came to sit beside me. "s.h.i.t, it's hot," she said. She smiled, the first real smile I'd seen since I arrived. "Who are you here with?"

"Just me," I said, taken aback by the question, as if I were supposed to bring a date. "I'm the technical advisor on anthropology."

"Wow," the girl breathed. "You mean you do this for a living?"

I smiled at her. "I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. You know, me being impressed because you're in the movies."

"Oh, I'm not really in them," she said. "I'm Janet's a.s.sistant." She pointed to the woman in the Kalahari bush jacket who was scanning a script. "My name's LeAnne."

I introduced myself and shook her hand, and then gestured toward the milling crowd. "How come no one's doing anything?" I asked.

LeAnne laughed, getting to her feet. "It's the business," she said. "A lot of hurry up and wait. Come on, I'll bet you don't know where the oasis is."

When she started to walk away I followed her. Inside a long, low tent was a feast. My eyes ran from one end of the table to the other, taking in sweating pitchers of mango juice and lemonade, piles of bananas and kiwis, finger sandwiches filled with chicken salad and something that looked like sliced egg, covered platters of coleslaw and sesame noodles. "Is this lunch?" I asked.

LeAnne shook her head. "Mr. Rivers likes knowing there's something to eat between takes. He arranges the whole thing, or actually, Jennifer does. She does for him what I do for Janet. If you think this is something, wait till you see the layout at lunch. Yesterday we had king crab. Can you believe that? King crab, in Africa."

I hesitantly took a banana, peeling it back and walking out of the tent into the hot sun. I lifted up my face, shielding my eyes. "What is this movie about?"

LeAnne was shocked that no one had told me. It was a sort of science fiction film; Alex Rivers was playing an anthropologist who unearths a partial skeleton that seems, at first sight, to predate anything ever found before. But when he gets the bones carbon-dated, he finds they come from the 1960s. Then he notices that the chemical makeup of the bones isn't quite what it should be, even if it had been an ancestral skeleton.

Turns out it's an alien, and that of course makes him wonder about the origins of man in the first place.

I nodded politely when LeAnne finished. Not something I would go see, but it would probably sell tickets.

I followed her back to a small knot of people, all of whom I was introduced to and whose names I promptly forgot. Most of the crew were sitting on the ground now. LeAnne started talking to another woman about the condition of the bathroom facilities on location, and I leaned back against a tall canvas chair.

It was just like the one the script woman had been sitting on, only this one said ALEX RIVERS across its back. Still, it was empty, and Alex Rivers didn't appear to be around, so I climbed into it.

LeAnne gasped and grabbed my wrist. "Get off that," she said.

Startled, I jumped down, forming a cloud of dust that had everyone on the ground coughing. "It's just a chair," I said. "No one was sitting there."

"It's Mr. Rivers's chair." I stared at her, waiting for the explanation.

"No one sits in Mr. Rivers's chair."

For G.o.d's sake. This was going to be worse than I had antic.i.p.ated.

I tried to convince myself that three hundred and fifty dollars per day was more than enough compensation for explaining the rudiments of collecting bone fragments to a man who thought china pitchers belonged in an off-site camp and who was so full of himself that only his own precious bottom could touch his canvas chair.

I knew something was about to happen by the shiver that ran through the air almost as quickly as the whispers spread. The crew started to stand, brushing off their shorts and returning to their respective positions on the set. Three men climbed up the dolly to the camera; the sound technician pressed his hand to one headphoned ear and rewound a portion of tape.

The man who had run after the rope called out for a woman named Suki. "Female stand-in," he yelled. "Suki, we need you for lighting." A woman who was not Janet the actress wandered toward the tents, and immediately a series of lights were set up around her and shifted into position.

I stared directly into one bright white beam, which was why I didn't see him until he almost walked on top of me. Alex Rivers threw his jacket onto the chair I had dared to sit upon, not noticing me any more than he seemed to notice the air around him. He was talking quietly with someone I a.s.sumed was Bernie Roth, since he looked nearly as important and wasn't paying attention to anyone either.

Alex Rivers was saying something about the black rope that I'd seen earlier. He brushed my arm as he moved past me, and I jumped backward.

It wasn't that he'd collided with me; it was the heat of his skin. I rubbed my own shoulder, certain there would be a red blister or a welt, some proof of what I'd felt. I watched him walk away from me, amazed when my sense of perspective did not kick in. Instead of Alex Rivers getting smaller and smaller, he seemed to fill my entire field of vision.

Without realizing what I was doing, I walked behind the tents, keeping several feet away from where he stood, but close enough to listen. He and Bernie Roth and a tall, muscular man were fingering the black rope that had been brought in earlier. A fourth man was bent back under the force of Alex Rivers's anger. "Listen to me," he said, cutting off whatever the man had been saying. "Just listen to me. Sven can jump with this rope, but this rope isn't white like I told you. You have two choices. You can go into town and try to find a rope that is white that he can jump with, or you can use this black rope and have me p.i.s.sed off at you for the next eleven weeks." He ran his hand over his face as if he was very tired. "This is about safety. The key criterion is whether or not Sven can use the rope for the stunt. Secondary is what the h.e.l.l color it shows up against a background."

The muscular man and the terrified set dresser walked off to the left, leaving me with a direct view of Alex Rivers. I stared at his profile, the muscles at the base of his jaw, the wind lifting light strands of his hair.

What a sanctimonious a.s.shole! I knew nothing about making movies, but I had seen my share of bureaucracy at UCLA, and Alex Rivers was no better than Archibald Custer. He milked the advantage of his position, and of the astonishment that everyone couldn't help but feel around him. Well, if I'd learned anything in the anthropology department, it was that you couldn't let the people who made decisions walk all over you. You had to put yourself in their league if you wanted them to believe you really belonged there.

I swallowed, then took a step forward. I'd introduce myself to him and Roth, mention the bush jacket and the ludicrous china pitcher, and then I'd give Rivers a piece of my mind.

But as soon as I stepped into Alex Rivers's line of vision, I froze. He held me spellbound, and I truly couldn't have said if I was in the Serengeti or Belgium or circling Mars. It had nothing to do with his features, although they were certainly arresting. It had to do with his power. There was something about his stare that made me unable to turn away.

His eyes gleamed, catching the light like the surface of a still pond.

Then he looked away, as if he was searching for something. When he caught my eye again, he was smiling. Resplendent. The word caught in my throat, and I wondered how I could spend hours working steadfastly beneath the high African sun, but become dazed by the image of a single man.

"Hon," Alex Rivers said, "can you get me something to drink?"

I blinked at him, but he was already moving away with the director at his heels. Who the h.e.l.l did he think he was? Who the h.e.l.l did he think I was?

His a.s.sistant. Or rather, he had been looking for his a.s.sistant and couldn't find her, and decided that obviously I'd been placed on this earth to serve at his beck and call. Like everyone else. I watched him settle into his high canvas chair, the soft seat and back molding around him, already cast in his form.

There was nothing I liked about him. I thought about what I would say when I called Ophelia. Guess what, I would begin. Alex Rivers is a pompous b.a.s.t.a.r.d who orders people around. He's so wrapped up in himself he can't see two feet away from where he's standing. And even as I was thinking this, I was walking toward the tent with the movable feast.

I hated him for making me forget what I had been about to say; I hated him for getting me to come here in the first place; I especially hated him for making my pulse catch at odd intervals, pounding like the drums of the natives I sometimes heard over the wind when I was digging on site. I picked a red plastic cup from a stack on a table and filled it to the brim with ice, knowing that it would take only minutes to melt. Then I added juice-papaya, I guessed-and I stirred it with a disposable knife, waiting until the cup began to sweat and the liquid had taken the temperature of the ice.